You must know me by now, I’m not exactly what you’d call fond of the Toronto Sun. But I guess it must fill some void out there because it’s managed to stay alive since 1971, and credit for that certainly must lie with Peter Worthington, the paper’s founding editor.

And another Old Lion of The Right has passed -Peter Worthington, founder of The Toronto Sun, died last night at Toronto General Hospital. Mr. Worthington, who was once accused by the Ottawa Citizen of being an FBI informer during the days of the Vietnam war, was present when Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald in a Dallas parking garage. He was known in later life for his spirited defence of those who feel the need to keep wild jungle animals such as lions and tigers on their properties in Prince Edward County. He also kept in close touch with serial killer Clifford Olsen and wrote many, many detail-ridden examinations of Mr. Olsen’s crimes and, in so doing, apparently tried to both fathom and explain how the mind of such a killer works. He failed on both counts but succeeded in selling tabloid newspapers and making sure Mr. Olson was never far from the limelight. Mr. Worthington was an ardent military buff and, in my opinion, never encountered a uniform that wasn’t deserving of a smart salute. His right wing views were seen by many, including Joe Clarks’s Progressive Conservatives, as being so extreme as to exclude him from the party nomination in the 1982 Broadview-Greenwood federal election. The PC’s went instead with an unknown -Bill Fatsis- who lost to the NDP. Mr. Worthington ran as an independent, coming in second.

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Daniel J. Christie
May 14th, 2013
4:05 pm

Was Peter Worthington an FBI informer during the Vietnam War? That’s what the Ottawa Citizen claimed. A Google search turns up lots of unpleasant stuff on Peter Worthington. Lots.

Sarah, with the greatest of respect, just after the terrible slaughter of so many innocent children and their teachers at Newtown, Connecticut just before Christmas, a great American debate arose: When is the proper time to talk about gun control? Many, claiming respect for the dead, said it was too soon after the tragedy, that the families needed time to ‘heal’ and get past the awful event. My opinion was that it was exactly the right time to talk about gun control because gun control was what it was all about. Many grieving parents agreed -and, I think, still do. The fact a person has died does not, in my opinion, separate that person from the factual accounting of what their lives wrought for the rest of us still living. Further, to not talk about all of those factual accountings -especially in the case of public figures who shaped public opinion, Margaret Thatcher, Doug Finlay, Peter Worthington among others, as soon as possible after their deaths, leads us down, I think, the unrealistic (to say nothing of sanctimonious) path of never speaking ill of the dead. And that’s neither a path I wish to go down nor a path I hope other choose upon my passing. I hope to be spoken ill of. I could ask no more. Because, if nothing else, it’s about the truth, isn’t it?

Daniel, I know you addressed your comments to Sarah but I have some opinions on the entire gun control issue as well. While I’m not opposed to disarming everyone (“everyone” being the operative word here), what concerns me is disarming citizens while the United States government has all of its federal forces buying so much ammunition that they could fight the Vietnam War for 35 years non-stop. In my mind, guns aren’t for sport or as a penis replacement, they’re for protection against tyranny of the kind we see building up both in the US and here in Canada. It’s protection against people who, in word, in law, and in deed, want to remove our freedoms and rights and subjugate us. I would point to the NDAA to the south, and Bill S-7 here, as just two glaring examples (for those who still think this is all just a conspiracy theory).

That being said, guns really don’t have many other purposes than killing and destroying. Cigarettes likewise have no real purpose except for a brief boost of nicotine and well-known addiction — and these have killed way more people than guns in the states:

About 10,000 deaths attributed to firearms in 2010 (declining steadily each year)
About 500,000 deaths attributed to smoking during the same period
And compare this to 32,885 deaths attributed to motor vehicles in to the same period

If the concern is really about what’s killing people, why don’t we start with the things that are actually killing people the most? No question that the anti-gun campaign is intended for something other than people’s safety — the facts are way too clear on this.